Our core values
Our culture is can-do mindset. Even though what we do is challenging, we are able to achieve all we want with 03 working principles.
Goal-oriented
We do not do things without being crystal clear WHY we do them and WHAT success looks like. We are resilient to overcome all difficulties until we achieve the goal or pivot to a new goal.
Excellence
We insist on the highest level of quality in EVERYTHING we do, down to details like an email. We consistently try to learn and improve instead of being content with the status quo.
Like a Family
We are ready to give brutally honest feedback to one another to make them better. We work hard and play hard TOGETHER.
Our Executive Board
UpYouth leadership team consists of talented and ambitious young people, who share a deep passion for startups.
Dao Phan Anh
President
Our Story
Phan Anh can spend the whole day talking with you about investing and building, as he believes in the virtuous cycle connecting these two factors.
Nguyen Canh Huy
Community & Partnership Director
Our Story
As a Computer Science student, Canh Huy discovered his passion for entrepreneurship after working at Got It AI Vietnam, an AI-driven startup based in Silicon Valley.
Pham Van Luong
Growth Director
Our Story
Luong Pham is indeed an explorer, who is ready to wear different hats to develop her diverse background knowledge.
Our Board of Trustees
To best support startups, UpYouth works closely with high-level advisors,
serial entrepreneurs, and seasoned investors.
Our founding story
As ‘real founders’, we’ve grown UpYouth from an idea into a thriving community for young Vietnamese entrepreneurs.
From MIT to Vietnam.
We build a future for young founders.
While studying in the US, our founder, Brian, joined an entrepreneurship bootcamp organized by MIT and was amazed by how MIT wholeheartedly support out-of-the-box ideas from high school students. The mentors expected highschoolers to found REAL ventures. Brian adored staying long hours after training sessions just to discuss "more" with mentors, or freezing nightwalks around MIT until dawn just to think of solutions to his users’ pain points. He then imagined a future of Vietnamese youth receiving those resources and having an incredible amount of innovation. But in reality, doing startups is often associated with uncertainties and failures, making this pathway "too risky" for Vietnamese youths to follow. Even when the trend of startups was rolling around, most entrepreneurial activities for students in Vietnam were pitching competitions. Students lean towards ideating quick-fix solutions and showcasing their business skills, while the whole process of validating problems, building products, and operating real startups is out of focus. Thereby, those competitions can neither give student entrepreneurs a hands-on learning experience, nor help them hone in traits of a real founder. As a result, available resources in Vietnam are mostly targeting "mature founders", who are believed to have higher commitment to their startup journeys.